Translator: Robert Bridges

From HymnsWithoutWords

Biography

Robert Bridges (1844 - 1930) was an English poet becoming Poet Laureate in 1913. He was born in Walmer, Kent, educated at Eton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He went on to study medicine in London at St Bartholomew's Hospital.

Bridges' literary work started long before his retirement, his first collection of poems having been published in 1873. In 1884 he married Monica Waterhouse, daughter of Alfred Waterhouse R.A., and spent the rest of his life in rural seclusion, first at Yattendon, Berkshire, then at Boars Hill, Oxford, where he died. The poet Elizabeth Daryush was his daughter.

Among those to set his poems to music were Hubert Parry, Gustav Holst, and later Gerald Finzi.

Bridges made an important contribution to hymnody with the publication in 1899 of his Yattendon Hymnal, which he created specifically for musical reasons. This collection of hymns became a bridge between the Victorian hymnody of the last half of the 19th century and the modern hymnody of the early 20th century. Bridges translated important historic hymns, and many of these were included in Songs of Syon (1904) and the later English Hymnal (1906).